What is personal and health information?

Personal information is recorded information that can identify a living person.

Health information is information that can identify a person, including a person who has died, that relates to the person’s physical, mental or psychological health, disability or genetic make-up. It also includes information about the health services provided, or that will be provided, to a person.

Why does the MHCC collect personal and health information?

We collect personal and health information to perform our functions under the Act. Our functions include:

resolving complaints about Victoria’s public mental health services

providing information, education and advice to mental health services about their complaint policies and procedures

identifying, analysing and reviewing quality and safety issues arising from complaints and making recommendations to improve mental health services

conducting investigations and issuing compliance notices.

The type of information that we collect depends on the function that we are performing. For example, if you make a complaint to us about a mental health service, we will collect information to try to resolve your concerns. This will include your name and contact details. It may also include information about your mental health, your treatment and care, and the health practitioners involved in your treatment and care.

We also collect personal information if a person tells us that they would like to receive information from us or participate in an awareness raising activity that we have organised.

Collecting information from other people or organisations

Complaints from consumers

If you are a consumer (the person receiving the mental health service), with your consent, we may collect personal or health information about you from mental health services or other people or organisations to help you resolve your concerns.

Complaints from other people

We can also accept complaints from a person acting at the request of a consumer or someone who has a genuine interest in the consumer’s wellbeing. If we do this, we will collect information about the person making the complaint and about the consumer.

In most of these cases, we will seek the consumer’s consent before collecting information about them. However, we may collect information without the consent of the consumer when we are authorised by the Act to:

accept complaints without obtaining the consumer’s consent - we can do this if we are satisfied that there are special circumstances and accepting the complaint will not harm the consumer’s wellbeing

help a person resolve a complaint directly with a mental health service.

What does the MHCC do with the information that they collect?

We have a legal obligation to keep personal and health information confidential and to disclose it only:

if we need to do so to perform our functions

with your consent

as otherwise authorised or required by law.

We use and disclose personal and health information for the purpose it was provided. For example, if the information was provided for the purpose of making a complaint, we will use and disclose that information to respond to the complaint.

We may also use and disclose personal and health information that is de-identified where appropriate:

to make recommendations for improving mental health services

for planning, research, funding, monitoring and evaluation purposes.

De-identified information may also be used and disclosed:

to report on our activities

for education and training activities.

Can I make an anonymous enquiry or complaint?

You can contact us to make an enquiry or a complaint without identifying yourself. However, to accept your complaint, we will need you to give us your name and contact details. You can ask us to keep your identity confidential, but this may affect the way the mental health service can respond to the complaint.

How does the MHCC store and protect personal and health information?

We take reasonable steps to keep the personal and health information that we hold accurate, complete and up-to-date. We store this information securely and use a number of standard safeguards to protect it from unauthorised access, misuse, loss, modification and disclosure. We also give each complaint that we receive its own record number – we do not use or copy special numbers or other unique identifiers from other organisations.